Kennedy speaks
Music summer
Candidate addresses conservative think tank
Musicians take to the stage around the region
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South Burlington’s Community Newspaper Since 1977
the JUNE 29, 2023
otherpapersbvt.com
VOLUME 47, NO. 26
Follow the leader
PHOTO BY MIKE DEAN
A new family enjoys South Burlington pond on a sunny June day.
South Burlington TIF district gets state auditor’s approval Hoffer noted in his report, “is due to processes implemented by the city, including close communication and cooperation South Burlington’s tax increment between program management and finance financing district received favorable management teams, consistent project oversight practices, and approvals from the state procedures that ensure auditor as part of its “We are excited to completeness of properfirst-ever audit since its ty records and accurainception 10 years ago. continue the work cy of the tax increment The report found that calculation.” South Burlington “received of City Center Tax increment the required approvals to financing, or TIF, is a issue debt and used the and realize the tool used by municipalidebt to finance eligible ties to finance public and improvement costs and community’s vision private development. related expenses” and that The district designation city officials “retained for the future.” allows the city to keep the correct amounts of municipal and education — Jessie Baker most of the property tax revenue collected from tax increment and used the area that otherwise the increment for allowed would have gone to the state’s educapurposes.” The city’s compliance with its TIF tion fund. It can then borrow against that district requirements, state auditor Doug “future” revenue, issuing debt to pay for COREY MCDONALD STAFF WRITER
projects and then using the extra revenue it would have paid to the state education fund to pay down that debt. TIF districts are required to undergo state audits after their first 10 years, and then every five years. South Burlington has been using the tool for its City Center, an area rezoned in the 1980s to spur private investment that has since become a hub for new residential development and commercial business. A new city hall, library and senior center have been built, and more than 300 housing units are either built or queued for construction in the coming months. City manager Jessie Baker, in a letter to Hoffer, said that the TIF district “has been our most important economic development tool” that has “enabled us to realize our community’s long held goals to develop a downtown — one that serves as a community gathering place and creates identity.” “After months of scrutiny, (Hoffer) and his team found that over the last ten years
the city of South Burlington has met the state requirements for the administration of our TIF district and is using the tool as designed,” she told The Other Paper. “We are excited to continue the work of City Center and realize the community’s vision for the future.” Baker said she was specifically proud that Hoffer “called out the professionalism of our community development, finance and assessing leaders — Ilona Blanchard, Martha Machar and Martha Lyons — for their work to ensure the successful administration of the TIF.” The news comes six months after Hoffer’s audit of Burlington’s TIF district found “millions of dollars of mistakes” in its infrastructure financing and showed that the city at the time owed the state nearly $200,000. South Burlington, more recently, has See TIF DISTRICT on page 11